FUNCTIONS OF PANDANE.E. 505 
in the Economy of nature, to this family of 
sea-side plants, viz. to take the first possession 
of new-formed land, just emerging from the 
water, we see in the disposition of light buoyant 
fibres within the interior of these fruits, an ar- 
rangement peculiarly adapted to the office of 
vegetable colonization.* The sea-side locality of 
the Pandanese, causes many of their fruits to 
fall into the water, wherein they are drifted 
by the winds and waves, until they find a rest- 
ing place upon some distant shore. A single 
drupe of Pandanus, thus charged with seeds, 
transports the elements of vegetation to the rising 
drupe of Pandanus are enclosed in a hard nut, of which sections 
are given at Figs. 14, 15. These nuts are wanting in the Podocarya, 
whose seeds are smaller than those of Pandanese, and not col- 
lected into drupes, but dispersed uniformly in single cells over 
the entire circumference of the fruit. (See PI. 63, Figs. 3, 8, 10.) 
The collection of the seeds into drupes surrounded by a hard 
nut, in the fruit of Pandanus, forms the essential difference 
between this genus, and our new genus, Podocarya. 
In the fruit of Pandanus, PI. 63, Figs. 11, 16, 17, the summit 
of each cell is covered with a hard cap or tubercle, irregularly 
hexagonal, and crowned at its apex with the remains of a withered 
stigma. We have a similar covering of hexagonal tubercles 
over the cells of Podocarya (PI. 63, Figs. 2, a. 8, a. 10, a.) The 
remains of a stigma appear also in the centre of these hexagons 
above the apex of each seed. (Figs. 8, a, 10, «.) 
* There is a similar provision for transporting to distant 
regions of the ocean, the seeds of the other family of sea-side 
plants which accompanies the Pandanus, in the buoyant mass of 
fibrous covering that surrounds the fruit of the Cocoa-nut. 
